Controversial American artist Spencer Tunick gave the Sunday Sun the bum's rush when we asked HIM to strip.

As dawn broke across Tyneside this morning, the artist was due to photograph more than 1000 naked people.

But when we asked him to pose in the buff for us - protecting his modesty with a copy of the Sunday Sun of course - he said nude must be joking.

"That's making fun of me," he laughed, shortly after arriving in Gateshead to prepare for the project.

"My works are not about celebrity, they are about creating a level playing field for different people and they are all treated with dignity, without highlighting individuals."

He stressed, however, that he had no problems with his own nudity and had posed naked in a series of his own works.

"Friends have taken photos of me, for me and my own works, but I have never been able to jump in to any of my group photos."

Tunick, 37, has been making a name for himself since 1992 with his installations . . . nudes photographed in settings that contrast with the contours of the human body.

He has been in the UK before to stage installations in London, but only snapped a few hundred people on those occasions, making this morning's event the biggest he has organised in this country.

He has not been welcomed everywhere and was even arrested in his home city of New York in 1999 for public indecency.

"Seeing the body in public in America is deemed as a violent crime, so I was arrested by police officers in the middle of doing an installation in New York and never got to finish it.

"That's why I work in the South side of the United States, where the Government don't want to put me in jail.

"The local government here in Newcastle and Gateshead are respectful and I think that the artists who continue to live here have great experiences and can express themselves. The doors to art are well and truly open here."

Around 1000 people were to get their kit off this morning during a series of shoots at secret locations around Newcastle Quayside and Gateshead Quays.

More than 3000 volunteered to strip by registering on Tunick's website, but organisers said past installations had a high drop-out rate, and that only between 1000 and 1200 people were actually expected to turn up.